Author: gio

notes on a scandal

this is a genre film — a psychopathological thriller a la patricia highsmith and thomas harris — that, like the best of its kind, comments on the deeper issues of misdirected love and pathologically unmet need (or: what do you do when the things you crave are forbidden?). notes on a scandal is brilliantly written/directed and brilliantly acted by all involved, though i would like to emphasize the amazing performances of cate blanchett and judy dench, who work together beautifully.

barbara (dench) is a no-nonsense high school history teacher who can break up a fight by saying ‘enough’ and get kids to fess up in three minutes flat. she’s also a lesbian so transparently repressed that everyone knows it except herself. sheba (blanchett) is a new, clumsy, and breezily beautiful art teacher who’s decided she needs a break from her quirky but demanding family of four. she’s married to an older, much less attractive than she (not difficult, since she’s glorious) guy (bill nighy), and her progeny are a grumpy teenage daughter and a 12-year-old boy with down syndrome. when sheba shows up in barbara’s school, it takes barbara exactly one second to decide that she’s going to become her ‘best friend.’ Continue reading notes on a scandal

forest for the trees

i’d like to recommend a small german film called the forest for the trees (2003). i stumbled upon it at the university library and i’m still haunted by it even though many weeks have gone by. the very simple story is about a young woman who, having just been left by her boyfriend, moves to a different town to teach middle school. lonely and friendless, she latches onto another young woman who lives near her. the story of this ill-fated friendship is so painful it is hard to watch. melanie is desperately needy. like needy people everywhere, she does her do all the wrong things and, most pathetically, exudes some indefinable vibe that repels others. the director captures this predicament and its impalpable elements so sharply that, if you have ever been needy, or dealt with a needy person, you’ll cringe. the countless scenes of melanie knocking on tina’s door are harrowing. Continue reading forest for the trees

the damnation of oliver o’grady

a woman filmmaker has made a documentary about a famous pedophialiac priest, using footage she obtained when she went to visit him in ireland and discovered to her surprise that the priest was more than happy to chat away about his deeds and desires. she filmed him for eight days.

i could write this as a comment in the free-for-all that follows the alternet post i link to above, but i don’t have the energy to duke it out with the death penalty invokers and the castration advocates. so excuse me as i take this blog out of the purely filmic and into the political.

witch-hunt/lynching: from the description of the film, the priest sounds totally deranged. he brags about what he did, gets lascivious, indulges in details. now how cool is that? how easy is it to put a deranged man in front of a camera and allow him to crucify himself without the benefit even of a miranda warning? no wonder the man had to flee ireland. judging from the small sample on alternet, there are a lot of people out there who would like a bloody piece of him. Continue reading the damnation of oliver o’grady

the yes men and harlan county, usa

these are both excellent political documentaries that manage not to depress but to encourage and fuel. or at least they did me. the yes me is about two guys (with a few sidekicks) who decide to take on the WTO. they build a website that looks just like the WTO’s, choose a url that attracts traffic directed to the WTO (it’s still up: www.gatt.org — GATT was the WTO’s original name), and proceed to respond to all invitations to conferences, summits, tv shows, etc. directed to their nemesis. the documentary follows them in a couple of such clandestine excursions into the world of high finance and international manipulation. they are remarkably low tech, mostly i suppose because money is tight, but still manage to pull off incredibly believable performances. their approach is simple: expose the WTO’s inhumane and repressive practices by exaggerating them to the point of absurdity and repugnance. Continue reading the yes men and harlan county, usa

the devil wears prada

i’ve been wanting to write about this for a bit, because i liked it a lot, but i wasn’t sure what to say. this is a film i educatedly suspect none of you has seen, but it’s the summer film i’ve easily liked best so far. this is not saying much, but i actually think this is quite good. the story is a neat rags-to-reaches fable, with plain girl who becomes beautiful, evil step-mother (meryl streep in superb form), prince charming, fake prince charming, evil step-sister who turns out to be all right after all, and evil twins. Continue reading the devil wears prada

badlands

i hope someone will chime in with an erudite reading of badlands in the context of terrence malick’s whole production as a writer and as a director, or with some cool comments on its straddling different genres (the western, the psychopathic killer genre, the dissaffected youth genre, etc. — though, of course, these are genres that are often superimposed). i saw it two nights ago for the first time and i was most impressed. what a film. it would be cool to view this in our summer club, except the summer is almost over, if not astronomically, at least from the point of view of our employment (sigh). anyway, if you think this would be a good selection, read no further, otherwise, click here: Continue reading badlands

miami vice

saw this yesterday with high expectations, because the miami herald gave it a resounding review, and one imagines the miami herald should know. but the miami herald, to which we are constantly cancelling our subscription in disgust and resuming it in desperation, knows nothing, least of all whether a movie allegedly about miami has anything at all to do with, er, miami. Continue reading miami vice

transamerica

wow. no one has mentioned transamerica once on this site. amazing. i wonder why that is. i mean, this is a film that received some pretty strong love. at the same time, it’s bad, bad trash, so maybe that’s why. i just watched it, and i had to squirm all the way through. so i’d really like to know what you guys think of it, if anyone watched it, and, above all, how the trans community felt about this very coarse representation of a mtf pre-op transexual who finds herself grappling for the first time in her life with the joys of parenthood just a week before the surgery. Continue reading transamerica

chumscrubbers, teenage worlds

Worst film of the year: The Chumscrubbers. I cannot even begin to describe how bad this movie is (and what a cast)

not quite sure why you feel this way, jeff. this is not, you’re right, a *good* movie — it’s badly written, acted, and directed, with a lot of stiffness and contrivedness, in spite of the stellar cast… it can even get a bad performance out of glenn close, and an awful one out of ralph fiennes — but it does something that i thought was interesting, namely show the teenage world as an impossibly difficult one, difficult well beyond the reach of adults. so i thought the adults came off as so awful not because they were really that awful, but because they were inexplicably selfish, self-involved, and idiotic in the eyes of the kids. thanks to jeff’s recommendation of allison bechdel’s fun home i have been thinking a lot about the way i felt when i was a teenager or thereabouts, and i have to say that this film resonated with me — the way in which it shows the terrible seriousness and complexity of teens’ lives, and the adults’ complete inability to get it. but also, conversely, the way in which teens perceive adults to be so awful, when in fact they *might* not be…
Continue reading chumscrubbers, teenage worlds